D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham abandoned this revision.
ngraham added a comment.


  Let's continue the first part of the discussion in T9500: UI scaling 
.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  In D14869#312228 , @ngraham wrote:
  
  > No, I would never propose removing the resolution slider/combobox. It's an 
implementation detail, but still an important one. What I am proposing is that 
we could somehow unify the various screen UI scaling methods and present them 
in a clearer and more prominent manner.
  
  
  now that's a great idea. 
  might not also be a bad idea to add a preview/screenshot thingy right next to 
the settings so people can see what the settings look like without having to 
apply them?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham added a comment.


  No, I would never propose removing the resolution slider/combobox. It's an 
implementation detail, but still an important one. What I am proposing is that 
we could somehow unify the various screen UI scaling methods and present them 
in a clearer and more prominent manner.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  > Third, maybe it makes sense to increase the titlebar font by a bit in order 
to emphasize it, but 13pt bold is super excessive.
  > 
  > Does this sound sensible to everyone who's chimed in here?
  
  Yes, sounds good, aside from:
  (1) The emphasis you're describing might be more suitable for inactive 
titlebars (because it's hard to tell what the window title of an inactive 
window is, seeing as the title is gray and the titlebar is sort of white) 
rather than active ones (that are already black-ish with white text on them). 
And in this particular case, a change of color may be all that's needed.
  (2) We need the resolution box in the Display and Monitor section, it's too 
much of a leap to expect to never change your screen resolution again - the 
combo box is a nice fallback.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  ^ Same here. It's certainly not unnecessary when a Wine game throws you back 
into a 640x480 Plasma, in fact it's crucial; you have to check with other users 
before calling it that! I think it's also sometimes used to align or tweak the 
screen resolution with the projector? The options the way they are are fine in 
my opinion, especially since display scaling via KScreen is bugged right now. 
When it gets fixed just somehow note it's the recommended method of scaling the 
display, no need to remove the other options.
  
  But back to the point, having automatic scaling would be great, yep.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Chris Rizzitello]

rizzitello added a comment.


  > ... do people change their screen resolutions very often anymore?
  
  Yes I have to change my resolution quite often and its almost always because 
of one of two things.
  
  1. Some application that was in fullscreen at a specific resolution has 
crashed (often a game via wine). This maybe solved by using wayland?
  2. I've added a new screen and its not set to the correct resolution ( A 
second / third screen). This is alot less of an issue then the first one.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Andres Betts]

abetts added a comment.


  In D14869#312156 , @ngraham wrote:
  
  > Apparently people are passionate about font sizes. :)
  >
  > after reading everyone's comments here, it seems like this will probably 
not work on its own, but has usefully exposed a number of other changes that we 
should make before revisiting it (if we ever do):
  >
  > First of all, it seems confusing and unnecessary to have multiple methods 
of adjusting the scale of the user interface:
  >
  > - Force Fonts DPI in the Fonts KCM. I've been told before that this is an 
ugly hack that people shouldn't use, but maybe that's not true?
  > - Adjusting the font size in the Fonts KCM automatically adjusts the size 
of user interface elements in a similar manner to the Force Fonts DPI setting.
  > - User interface scaling in the KScreen KCM. This appears to be the 
recommended method, though it's still quite buggy and exposes a lot of visual 
artifacts, which are steadily being fixed, to be fair. Also, it currently only 
supports integer scale factors in Wayland.
  > - Resolution slider/combobox in the KScreen KCM. This is probably not 
something users should use for scaling the UI (do people change their screen 
resolutions very often anymore), but it's there anyway.
  >
  > Second, it seems like we should do some scaling automatically so that 
people don't see radically different sizes for their user interface depending 
on the DPI of their screen. If you measured window titlebars with a caliper on 
multiple screens of different DPI values, the height should always be the same. 
This should also be automatic out of the box if possible, so that people don't 
need to manually configure it to get it to work. I think users would really 
love this feature, which would in practice probably depend on sorting out the 
first issue first.
  >
  > Third, //maybe// it makes sense to increase the titlebar font by a bit in 
order to emphasize it, but 13pt bold is super excessive.
  >
  > Does this sound sensible to everyone who's chimed in here?
  
  
  This sounds good to me!

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham added a comment.


  Apparently people are passionate about font sizes. :)
  
  after reading everyone's comments here, it seems like this will probably not 
work on its own, but has usefully exposed a number of other changes that we 
should make before revisiting it (if we ever do):
  
  First of all, it seems confusing and unnecessary to have multiple methods of 
adjusting the scale of the user interface:
  
  - Force Fonts DPI in the Fonts KCM. I've been told before that this is an 
ugly hack that people shouldn't use, but maybe that's not true?
  - Adjusting the font size in the Fonts KCM automatically adjusts the size of 
user interface elements in a similar manner to the Force Fonts DPI setting.
  - User interface scaling in the KScreen KCM. This appears to be the 
recommended method, though it's still quite buggy and exposes a lot of visual 
artifacts, which are steadily being fixed, to be fair. Also, it currently only 
supports integer scale factors in Wayland.
  - Resolution slider/combobox in the KScreen KCM. This is probably not 
something users should use for scaling the UI (do people change their screen 
resolutions very often anymore), but it's there anyway.
  
  Second, it seems like we should do some scaling automatically so that people 
don't see radically different sizes for their user interface depending on the 
DPI of their screen. If you measured window titlebars with a caliper on 
multiple screens of different DPI values, the height should always be the same. 
This should also be automatic out of the box if possible, so that people don't 
need to manually configure it to get it to work. I think users would really 
love this feature, which would in practice probably depend on sorting out the 
first issue first.
  
  Third, //maybe// it makes sense to increase the titlebar font by a bit in 
order to emphasize it, but 13pt bold is super excessive.
  
  Does this sound sensible to everyone who's chimed in here?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Chris Rizzitello]

rizzitello added a comment.


  In D14869#312041 , @filipf wrote:
  
  > > ! In D14869#311980 , @rooty 
wrote:
  > > you can always put in a wizard that runs on booting for the first time 
and asks people for their preferences... i still wouldn't hardcode them (what 
if you change your mind later on)
  >
  > I think this is a good idea. We still get some newcomers complaining that 
the configuration options are too much for them so we could make a simplified 
wizard that would address the essentials. This would also perhaps tone down the 
need for and discussion about flipping defaults. We could have questions such 
as:
  >
  > - how would you like your desktop to be organized? Windows style, Mac 
style, Ubuntu style etc.
  > - do you prefer a light or dark theme? -> with allowing an option for a 
light theme with a dark panel
  > - how big should the fonts be? -> just a slider with real-time preview, if 
not of Plasma then sample text in the dialog
  > - do you wish to use single click or double click to open files?
  > - etc. -> something else of relevance
  >
  >   It wouldn't even necessarily have to pop-out upon first boot, just be 
somewhere prominent in system settings. But even if it pops-out, that's not 
that unprecedented in the Linux world, XFCE for example asks you for the 
preferred panel configuration. And you can always add a big SKIP button.
  
  
  I am all for a new user wizard. I have stated this on several of these kinds 
of threads.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  In D14869#311980 , @rooty wrote:
  
  >
  
  
  you can always put in a wizard that runs on booting for the first time and 
asks people for their preferences... i still wouldn't hardcode them (what if 
you change your mind later on)
  
  I think this is a good idea. We still get some newcomers complaining that the 
configuration options are too much for them so we could make a simplified 
wizard that would address the essentials. This would also perhaps tone down the 
need for and discussion about flipping defaults. We could have questions such 
as:
  
  - how would you like your desktop to be organized? Windows style, Mac style, 
Ubuntu style etc.
  - do you prefer a light or dark theme? -> with allowing an option for a light 
theme with a dark panel
  - how big should the fonts be? -> just a slider with real-time preview, if 
not of Plasma then sample text in the dialog
  - do you wish to use single click or double click to open files?
  - etc. -> something else of relevance
  
  It wouldn't even necessarily have to pop-out upon first boot, just be 
somewhere prominent in system settings. But even if it pops-out, that's not 
that unprecedented in the Linux world, XFCE for example asks you for the 
preferred panel configuration. And you can always add a big SKIP button.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  In D14869#311998 , @rikmills wrote:
  
  > In D14869#311997 , @rooty wrote:
  >
  > > P.S. wasn't this problem settled already in T7864 
?
  >
  >
  > No, that's a task on Kubuntu workboard about changing our distro specific 
defaults.
  
  
  ah sorry my bad

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Rik Mills]

rikmills added a comment.


  In D14869#311997 , @rooty wrote:
  
  > P.S. wasn't this problem settled already in T7864 
?
  
  
  No, that's a task on Kubuntu workboard about changing our distro specific 
defaults.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  P.S. wasn't this problem settled already in T7864 
?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  In D14869#311957 , @rkflx wrote:
  
  > @ngraham Could you comment on why (on your personal machine) you went for 
increasing the font size instead of changing the DPI value? (If this is a UI 
issue, telemetry might give skewed results, BTW.)
  >
  > In T7254#152631 , @ngraham wrote:
  >
  > > I think the font DPI setting needs to be much more hidden or even 
disappear completely IMHO.
  >
  >
  > But why? The DPI spinbox allows for much more fine-tuning, and also affects 
all other places where the fonts you are changing here are not even used. If a 
display has smaller physical pixels, this affects everything and not only the 
standard fonts, doesn't it? (And in some cases you might not want fractional 
scaling, and only change fonts DPI.)
  
  
  i think the DPI thing is a mistake too, removing the font DPI setting goes 
against the grain of what a lot of people (including yours truly) use KDE for, 
customizability
  
  @ngraham if you want to set a different default value fine, but please don't 
remove the option i.e. emulate Apple's mistakes by locking things down... macs 
work in spite of their flaws, not because of them; you can always put in a 
wizard that runs on booting for the first time and ask people what their 
preferences are... i still wouldn't hardcode them (what if you change your mind 
later on)

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  In D14869#311891 , @davidedmundson 
wrote:
  
  > > what do you mean by facts though, isn't telemetry just a bunch of 
personal preferences heaped up?
  >
  > Yes.
  >  That is /considerably/ better than having just a  few people's personal 
preferences heaped up, which is the  current state of this thread.
  
  
  Everyone unfortunately thinks numbers = hard facts and this can be pretty 
erroneous and lead to manipulation. If you are going to resort to telemetry for 
making decision such as this one (which you shouldn't, but potentially only to 
support claims):
  
  1. please make sure to know what kind of sample you are operating with ie. 
who has turned ON telemetry (since I see it's going to be opt-in) -> the 
expectation here is that you'll have developers overrepresentened because 
regular users tend to dislike even the mention of telemetry
  2. make sure to record the screen resolution used AND the screen size -> of 
course people with small high-res screens are going to be more likely to 
increase font sizes
  3. make sure to take into account that not all fonts have the same metrics-> 
I don't believe you are going to build a database that would somehow categorize 
fonts in relation to how big they are on their own. Ever turned on one of those 
niche fonts out of fun, only to have to increase them to 14pt because they're 
just so small? Cantarell is smaller than Noto Sans e.g. You must take these 
things into account.
  4. above all, please take into account that you will have zero data on what 
someone's eyesight is like, which is a major variable here
  
  You are never going to get a full picture with numbers, not even if you solve 
the first 3 points suitably. Qualitative insights are much needed here, so it's 
good to have look if someone's been saying anything about fontsizes and also to 
ask e.g on Reddit to see what the users' input is.
  
  Let's not forgot the method of experiment either, if still feeling about this 
strongly, as a more sensible change to test this I'd suggest increasing the 
font DPI to 102 and then try it out in KDE Neon for a little while. There are 
too many steps and arguments being skipped here.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Henrik Fehlauer]

rkflx added a comment.


  @ngraham Could you comment on why (on your personal machine) you went for 
increasing the font size instead of changing the DPI value? (If this is a UI 
issue, telemetry might give skewed results, BTW.)
  
  In T7254#152631 , @ngraham wrote:
  
  > I think the font DPI setting needs to be much more hidden or even disappear 
completely IMHO.
  
  
  But why? The DPI spinbox allows for much more fine-tuning, and also affects 
all other places where the fonts you are changing here are not even used. If a 
display has smaller physical pixels, this affects everything and not only the 
standard fonts, doesn't it? (And in some cases you might not want fractional 
scaling, and only change fonts DPI.)

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  In D14869#311895 , @davidedmundson 
wrote:
  
  > > will you be using your telemetry data to dictate whether the default's 
double click to open or single click to open?
  >
  > It would certainly be a large factor, yes,
  
  
  that's not a yes  but hey baby steps

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[David Edmundson]

davidedmundson added a comment.


  > will you be using your telemetry data to dictate whether the default's 
double click to open or single click to open?
  
  It would certainly be a large factor, yes,

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  In D14869#311891 , @davidedmundson 
wrote:
  
  > > what do you mean by facts though, isn't telemetry just a bunch of 
personal preferences heaped up?
  >
  > Yes.
  >  That is /considerably/ better than having just a  few people's personal 
preferences heaped up, which is the  current state of this thread.
  
  
  will you be using your telemetry data to dictate whether the default's double 
click to open or single click to open?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[David Edmundson]

davidedmundson added a comment.


  > what do you mean by facts though, isn't telemetry just a bunch of personal 
preferences heaped up?
  
  Yes.
  That is /considerably/ better than having just a  few people's personal 
preferences heaped up, which is the  current state of this thread.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  there's simply no need to change this, Noto Sans at 10 pt is perfectly 
readable and blends in with the UI elements better
  Noto Sans at 11 pt looks disproportionate, perhaps if a different font were 
used (like filipf said, Cantarell)
  
  @davidedmundson 
  why should telemetry be the reason the UI fonts be changed? neither Apple nor 
Microsoft does this either?
  what do you mean by facts though, isn't telemetry just a bunch of personal 
preferences heaped up?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Marco Martin]

mart added a comment.


  +1 for 11pt in general by the way

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Marco Martin]

mart added a comment.


  In D14869#309821 , @abetts wrote:
  
  > I like the way this looks, I would like to push it further for clarity and 
ask for window title at 13 and bold. I feel people stand to benefit from seeing 
a window title that is readable, especially when we have a dark color 
background default.
  
  
  that's a thing i would like to talk about more (also because for this i don't 
have research to point at, just a strong opinion on my side ;)):
  I really hate bold fonts anywhere in the UI. it should be a thing for 
documents and documents only.
  I would really like us to try to avoid bold anywhere, but at most use the 
size for things that should be  more prominent than others

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  In D14869#311447 , @oysteins wrote:
  
  > In D14869#309949 , @rkflx wrote:
  >
  > > F6198464: kubuntu10-kubunbtu11-win10-macos.png 

  >
  >
  > I feel that Windows' font rendering produces significantly sharper fonts 
than anything else. FWIW I think it's both their choice of font (Segoe UI) and 
their ClearType technology that makes text in Windows easy to read even at 9pt. 
Increasing Noto Sans' size doesn't make it sharper in my eyes; perhaps AA and 
general font rendering is worth looking at.
  
  
  Possibly. But I bet what is more likely is that they set those values back 
when we didnt have FHD and touch screens and just stuck with it. That's 
Windows, they don't do as much revamping as much as they just add stuff on top 
of what already exists.
  
  But font rendering in Windows is also a mess. ClearType is an old technology 
from a different time and has been deprecated in favor of Greyscale (which is, 
funny enough, worse than ClearType because it's fuzzier). It was seen as an 
enhacement when it was implemented moreso because what they had before was 
awful and because screens were bad rather it being a great way to render fonts. 
Nowadays there may even be a 3rd type of rendering in Windows IIRC; they all 
co-exist in the same environment. But what's common to all of them is that they 
crudely alter fonts to artificially fit a pixel grid. In practice this usually 
means they thin them out and distort their proportions, making them either 
taller/shorter or wider/narrower than intended. Fonts also look jagged thanks 
to this. More real life consequences of distorting the typeface is that it 
ruins the vision the (non-Microsoft) font creator had for its font, that what 
is on the screen does not match printed material, that websites and PDFs may 
not look as you envisioned them etc. This is partly one of the reasons why 
design people prefer Macs and once you develop an eye for what fonts actually 
look like, you may also tend to see hinting as making fonts uglier. For 
instance, you can have a look at how Phabricator's Lato font looks like on your 
phone (provided the screen resolution isn't too shoddy) and then compare it 
with what hinting does to the font on the computer screen. On your phone it 
looks like it's supposed to.
  
  However, probably owing to most of Linux users being Windows users initially, 
from what I've seen the larger part of Linux community wants Freetype to be 
similar to Cleartype. This is not just unfortunate for the reasons mentioned 
above, but also because Freetype is already a great font renderer. I could 
provide plenty visual corroboration regarding this issue, but since this is not 
the topic here per se I just wanted to point out that there is a different 
approach than wanting "sharp" looking text. We could be going after fonts 
looking "crisp" instead, all the while remaining true to the typeface.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Øystein S . -Alværvik]

oysteins added a comment.


  In D14869#309949 , @rkflx wrote:
  
  > F6198464: kubuntu10-kubunbtu11-win10-macos.png 

  
  
  I feel that Windows' font rendering produces significantly sharper fonts than 
anything else. FWIW I think it's both their choice of font (Segoe UI) and their 
ClearType technology that makes text in Windows easy to read even at 9pt. 
Increasing Noto Sans' size doesn't make it sharper in my eyes; perhaps AA and 
general font rendering is worth looking at.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  Except it doesn't really boil down to personal preference, unless we're 
taking eyesight into the equation.
  
  11pt does not just make the fonts look somewhat big, but also increases UI 
elements, most notably the titlebar (and its buttons) and Kickoff. This is why 
13pt titlebars is an even worse idea. This change would most adversely affect 
lower resolution monitors and I guarantee you'd have complains. Even on a 
decently sized 1080p monitor it looks too big. On the other hand, there was a 
good question asked here already: have we had any complaints from the community 
now regarding the 10pt default?
  
  If we take the 'how it works in other OS' as a line of argumentation, the 
comparison is invalid; they don't default to 11pt and consequently everything 
in Plasma would look bigger than what people are used to. Windows is an 
inconsistent mess, but the most prominent font size is 9pt - what was 
previously known as icon font size. I have no experience with macOS, but there 
has been a screenshot here shown.
  
  I've also taken a look at GNOME (Fedora 28). At first glance, Nate was right, 
there is a major competitor using 11pt as a default:
  
  F6201724: Screenshot from 2018-08-17 10-19-02.png 

  
  This is, however misleading. Cantarell and Noto Sans do not have the same 
metrics. 11pt Cantarell is in fact the equivalent of 10pt Noto Sans. In the 
following pics you can see that Noto Sans is substantially bigger at 11pt than 
Cantarell.
  
  F6201727: Screenshot from 2018-08-17 10-20-45.png 

  
  F6201729: Screenshot from 2018-08-17 10-20-07.png 

  
  Finally, if GNOME were using Noto Sans, they'd be using it at 10pt as well 
because only then is it comparable to 11pt Cantarell:
  
  F6201734: Screenshot from 2018-08-17 10-25-05.png 

  
  And conversely, if we were using Cantarell as the default font we'd use it at 
11pt. But defaulting Noto Sans to 11pt would be a mistake.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[David Edmundson]

davidedmundson added a comment.


  This is exactly the sort of topic that will benefit from the telemetary data 
that we will hopefully start to have soon. Then we can back things up with 
facts.
  
  Otherwise it can come across as "my personal preference is blah" - and whilst 
that's exactly how the original ones came about, making a change (especially 
mid major-cycle) faces more resistance.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  > After digging around I checked on windows 7 the default for is 9pt. every 
thing with a font. I was not able to find that box on the windows 10 machine 
tried on.
  
  They removed that particular configuration box back in Windows 8. Anyway, 
this is Windows 10:
  
  F6198831: windows10fontsizes.png 
  
  The default icon fontsize probably still defaults to a 9pt, while "small" is 
8pt. Like I said, the newest bits of UI have larger fonts; maybe what's in the 
settings menu actually is 11pt. But either way Windows does not default to 11pt 
as a whole. We have a much consistent experience here however, with 10pt being 
the sanest option for the largest portion of devices.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Chris Rizzitello]

rizzitello added a comment.


  > How does your suggestion relate to both the DPI value of your hardware and 
what Xorg uses? Do we actually set a higher DPI value for Hi(gher)DPI hardware 
automatically, so the actual size to the eye is independent of the display in 
use? If not, why not?
  
  I have several HiDpi displays on a few machines and  Not a single one has 
changed the dpi for me. I have had to set the dpi on each machine. After that 
is done pretty much all scaling issues go away. Other then the occasional icon 
or control w/ a hard coded size. I do not use scaling on my hidpi displays at 
all it is not needed after the dpi is correctly set.
  
  > Other Os sizes.
  
  Looking around the net and trying on some windows machines here it seams they 
really bury the font size settings since i was not able to find them in the 
font or display area, they only provide an option to adjust scale of the screen 
or the dpi . To change the font setting you need to modify the theme your 
using.  After digging around I checked on windows 7 the default for is 9pt. 
every thing with a font. I was not able to find that box on the windows 10 
machine tried on.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Root]

rooty added a comment.


  nah, it's too disproportionate with regard to the sliders and bars in all the 
Qt apps that use the fonts, (it's just too big, pun intended)
  10pt is the best, as well as 9pt for Hack

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  As an alternative solution maybe you could consider changing the default font 
DPI from 96 to 102. This would be a much subtler change and yet the fonts are 
bit bigger and look nicer.
  
  Before:
  F6198629: Screenshot_20180816_112404.png 

  
  After:
  F6198631: Screenshot_20180816_112347.png 

  
  I don't know if it's a more controversial move from a technical point of view 
than changing fontsizes though. E.g. qt5ct offers 102 as a default value so 
perhaps not?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  Have a look at maybe one of the worse scenarios where this change would 
reflect itself - a measly 19" 1280x1080 monitor (kind of obsolete sure, so this 
is more for illustrative purposes):
  
  F6198603: Screenshot_20180816_110753.png 

  
  Kickoff now takes up a too large portion of the screen, the titlebar and its 
buttons have consequently grown in size as well and one of the desktop icon 
filenames is now broken up.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Filip Fila]

filipf added a comment.


  Even in your screenshots 11pt looks too big and 13pt titlebars are just 
obscene.
  
  There are a few use cases where it pays of to have 11pt fonts - namely when 
you have a full HD laptop screens that would require 1.2 scaling and you'd 
prefer to do it the fonts way. On proper monitors it just looks too big. It' 
not necessary, but if you want to point out the titlebars an elegant touch can 
be to just have it the same size as the default font size, but use the semibold 
font style.
  
  I'm also not sure if other OS' default to 11pt. In Windows 7 you could easily 
check these settings in the window metrics dialog and I'm pretty sure it was 
either 9 or 10 by default. On the other hand, I don't have too much experience 
with Windows 10. It seems to me that their new Fluent Design project is using 
larger fonts than before, but it also seems to me like they're inconsistent 
about font sizes right now .
  
  As for font rendering, if you want to mimic the Apple's approach of 
preserving the typeface then the settings are: hinting=off, subpixel 
rendering=rbg, lcdfilder=lcddefault. Hinting distorts the typeface and is prone 
to producing jaggedness that, yes, goes away a bit when you increase font sizes.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Rik Mills]

rikmills added a comment.


  In D14869#309949 , @rkflx wrote:
  
  > I fear this will make it better for some people and worse for others, 
creating nothing but churn. Did you test this with several of said displays?
  
  
  I would agree with that to a large extent. The current defaults while not 
being ideal for everyone, are in my opinion at a reasonable middle ground 
already. Increasing even by this 1pt starts to skew this too far one way.
  
  In D14869#309949 , @rkflx wrote:
  
  > 5. Are there many bug reports of users complaining about too small fonts in 
Plasma? If so, could you add links?
  
  
  I can't comment on bug reports, but as far as I can think with user feedback 
on Kubuntu, the default fon't size has not been an issue of concern on any 
serious level.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Safa Alfulaij]

safaalfulaij added a comment.


  I use an old laptop with 1280×800 display (not like you should really count 
for it, this is old).
  
  Noto Sans 10, good readable (but ugly for Arabic):
  F6198491: Screenshot_٢٠١٨٠٨١٦_١٠٤٨٣٢.png 

  Noto Sans 11, huge (and ugly for Arabic):
  F6198495: Screenshot_٢٠١٨٠٨١٦_١٠٤٨٠٧.png 

  Mada Medium 10, good not that much readable and good for Arabic:
  F6198499: Screenshot_٢٠١٨٠٨١٦_١٠٤٩٣٠.png 

  Mada Medium 11, huge and good for Arabic:
  F6198501: Screenshot_٢٠١٨٠٨١٦_١٠٤٩٤٨.png 

  Mada Medium 10.5, perfect for me:
  F6198503: Screenshot_٢٠١٨٠٨١٦_١٠٥٠٢٣.png 

  
  Conclusion
  --
  
  11pt is too much.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Rik Mills]

rikmills added a comment.


  Increasing the default font size was suggested for Kubuntu in T7864 

  
  I have the same concerns/objections as I did then.
  
  As has been mentioned  this scales other UI elements like kicker. Having also 
tested at the time with a fairly typical 1600x900 laptop display, it looked 
quite awful. A bit like it was designed for use by a short sighted toddler. Not 
every KDE user has a nice large res or hidpi display. In fact usage of FOSS OS 
often seems to be wider for lower end spec machines and displays.
  
  If this change goes ahead, I may have to give serious though to overriding 
new default in our Kubuntu settings package, but that brings issues of 
diverging from what will then be tried and tested defaults (I hope) which is 
additional testing burden on a small team.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Max Harmathy]

harmathy added a comment.


  Just to add another fact to the discussion:
  
  The metric pt is an absolute measure for the size. In computing we use the 
desktop publishing point which is 1/72 inch (see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typographic_unit). 
  Therefore ideally 10 pt sized font should be rendered the same size 
independently from display resolution.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Henrik Fehlauer]

rkflx added a comment.


  @ngraham I've got a couple of questions regarding your RFC:
  
  > It's notable that all other desktop operating systems use at least 11pt as 
the size of their UI font, and some go much larger. The experiment has already 
been done for us and the results appear to have been positive judging by the 
fact that everyone else made the jump to 11pt UI font size. Perhaps we should 
too.
  
  I tried to verify that, so I took some screenshots:
  
  F6198464: kubuntu10-kubunbtu11-win10-macos.png 

  
  1. As far as I can see, the most-used desktop operating system uses the 
smallest fonts. Why is it that my screenshots show a smaller or equal size when 
comparing "other desktops" to our current and well-balanced offer, but 
according to your comment they should show a much larger size? Do you have 
screenshots? Did you compare 100% scaling for each?
  
  2. As far as I know you are using a laptop where a fractional scaling factor 
slightly larger than 1 would be in order, but instead you compensate by 
increasing the font size. Nothing wrong with that, but I wonder how large the 
fonts will become on other people's displays, e.g. a standalone cheap 1080p 
monitor with a DPI below 100, which are very common. I fear this will make it 
better for some people and worse for others, creating nothing but churn. Did 
you test this with several of said displays?
  
  3. How does your suggestion relate to both the DPI value of your hardware and 
what Xorg uses? Do we actually set a higher DPI value for Hi(gher)DPI hardware 
automatically, so the actual size to the eye is independent of the display in 
use? If not, why not?
  
  4. This only scales fonts, but other UI elements are unaffected, so 
proportions as originally intended by the creators get distorted. Would it make 
sense to refer users to fractional scaling instead, or even make it automatic 
once it works well enough?
  
  5. Are there many bug reports of users complaining about too small fonts in 
Plasma? If so, could you add links?

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Andres Betts]

abetts added a comment.


  In D14869#309824 , @ngraham wrote:
  
  > In D14869#309821 , @abetts wrote:
  >
  > > I like the way this looks, I would like to push it further for clarity 
and ask for window title at 13 and bold. I feel people stand to benefit from 
seeing a window title that is readable, especially when we have a dark color 
background default.
  >
  >
  > Here's how that would look with a comparison.
  >
  > 11pt title:
  >  F6197910: 11pt title.png 
  >
  > 13pt title:
  >  F6197911: 13pt bold title.png 
  >
  > To me that looks way too heavy and attention-getting. Here's 13pt non-bold:
  >  F6197917: 13pt title.png 
  >
  > Or even 11pt bold:
  >  F6197921: 11pt bold title.png 
  >
  > I actually really like 11 pt bold for the title.
  >
  > In D14869#309804 , @rizzitello 
wrote:
  >
  > > I think the issue is more your hinting then the font size.
  >
  >
  > 11pt does look even better when the hinting is appropriate (slight RGB 
hinting for most people), which is fixed by D12925: Parse global config files. 
Remove 'Vendor default' option. Fix changes not recognized. 
. But that's not really related to this. 
The idea of making the size bigger is to increase readability, which is just 
something that naturally comes from having the text be bigger; this is not 
controversial. The question is not whether larger text is more readable (it 
is), it's whether or not it's worth it because of the trade-offs involved.
  
  
  I would probably do 13 pt titlebar and no bold

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Chris Rizzitello]

rizzitello added a comment.


  The title bar with the bold font looks nice at both sizes.
  
  >   Reduced text density (obviously)
  
  Our defaults are not very dense so the loss of density is only going to be 
bad, except for the case of small screens. On those its more then reasonable to 
assume you will need to adjust your fonts and the sizes of things in general 
anyway.
  
  >   Some UI elements become larger, reducing overall screen density. It's 
particularly noticeable with Kickoff and the Task Manager. Are we willing to 
live with that, or should we investigate whether or nor that kind of scaling 
should happen? 
  
  To try to figure out how much larger things will be with these new defaults 
for the fonts I used gimp's scale tool with the provided images. Its looking 
like the average element will be 10% larger with the bump up in font size. This 
should effect any element that has text, all qlabels without text and anything 
using Font Metrics.
  
  > There are also some widgets like the System Tray whose icons become spaced 
very slightly farther apart for basically no reason (there's no text). Is this 
a bug we should fix?
  
  Yes, We should look into why these widgets are acting that way.

REPOSITORY
  R119 Plasma Desktop

REVISION DETAIL
  https://phabricator.kde.org/D14869

To: ngraham, #plasma, #kde_applications, valorie, #vdg
Cc: abetts, davidedmundson, rizzitello, plasma-devel, ragreen, Pitel, ZrenBot, 
lesliezhai, ali-mohamed, jensreuterberg, sebas, apol, mart

D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham added a comment.


  In D14869#309821 , @abetts wrote:
  
  > I like the way this looks, I would like to push it further for clarity and 
ask for window title at 13 and bold. I feel people stand to benefit from seeing 
a window title that is readable, especially when we have a dark color 
background default.
  
  
  Here's how that would look with a comparison.
  
  11pt title:
  F6197910: 11pt title.png 
  
  13pt title:
  F6197911: 13pt bold title.png 
  
  To me that looks way too heavy and attention-getting. Here's 13pt non-bold:
  F6197917: 13pt title.png 
  
  Or even 11pt bold:
  F6197921: 11pt bold title.png 
  
  I actually really like 11 pt bold for the title.
  
  In D14869#309804 , @rizzitello 
wrote:
  
  > I think the issue is more your hinting then the font size.
  
  
  11pt does look even better when the hinting is appropriate (slight RGB 
hinting for most people), which is fixed by D12925: Parse global config files. 
Remove 'Vendor default' option. Fix changes not recognized. 
. But that's not really related to this. 
The idea of making the size bigger is to increase readability, which is just 
something that naturally comes from having the text be bigger; this is not 
controversial. The question is not whether larger text is more readable (it 
is), it's whether or not it's worth it because of the trade-offs involved.

REPOSITORY
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REVISION DETAIL
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To: ngraham, #plasma, #kde_applications, valorie, #vdg
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lesliezhai, ali-mohamed, jensreuterberg, sebas, apol, mart

D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Andres Betts]

abetts added a comment.


  I like the way this looks, I would like to push it further for clarity and 
ask for window title at 13 and bold. I feel people stand to benefit from seeing 
a window title that is readable, especially when we have a dark color 
background default.

REPOSITORY
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REVISION DETAIL
  https://phabricator.kde.org/D14869

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[David Edmundson]

davidedmundson added a comment.


  This isn't the only place this needs changing, but we can sort that out 
if/when the concept gets accepted.

REPOSITORY
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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Chris Rizzitello]

rizzitello added a comment.


  Honestly if you look at the last before and after shot the text now looks 
worse then when it was 10 pt. I think the issue is more your hinting then the 
font size.

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D14869: [RFC] Increase default font sizes by 1 pt

[Nathaniel Graham]

ngraham created this revision.
ngraham added reviewers: Plasma, KDE Applications.
Herald added a project: Plasma.
Herald added a subscriber: plasma-devel.
ngraham requested review of this revision.

REVISION SUMMARY
  We discussed the idea of increasing the font sizes by 1 pt at the VDG BoF at 
this year's Akademy and folks seemed okat with the idea.
  
  This would yield improved readability for text: in addition to just being 
larger, Noto looks sharper and more substantial at 11pt than it does at 10pt. 
And the default 9pt Hack for the Fixed Width font is just really really small 
and hard to read; 10pt is much easier. Same with the Small font, which goes 
from 8 to 9.
  
  It's notable that all other desktop operating systems use at least 11pt as 
the size of their UI font, and some go much larger. The experiment has already 
been done for us and the results appear to have been positive judging by the 
fact that everyone else made the jump to 11pt UI font size. Perhaps we should 
too.
  
  Downsides:
  
  - Reduced text density (obviously)
  - Some UI elements become larger, reducing overall screen density. It's 
particularly noticeable with Kickoff and the Task Manager. Are we willing to 
live with that, or should we investigate whether or nor that kind of scaling 
should happen? There are some widgets like the System Tray whose icons become 
spaced very slightly farther apart for basically no reason. Is this a bug we 
should fix?
  
  It's worth reiterating that this is simply a change of defaults; programmers 
and pepople under 25 who have perfect eyesight can always reduce the font sizes 
to increase the on-screen density. But I think it's worth revisiting whether 
this is the group of people whe want to optimize the text for by default.

TEST PLAN
  Examples:
  Before:
  
  After:
  
  Before:
  
  After:

REPOSITORY
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BRANCH
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REVISION DETAIL
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AFFECTED FILES
  kcms/fonts/fonts.cpp

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